If you missed the Terminal Operators Conference in Hamburg, Germany, earlier this month, well … you didn’t miss much. It was a repeat of everything you heard at the last conference you attended, and the one before that, and the one before that. Jutta Iten covered this conference and posted an article in the International Transport Journal. The article began with the headline, “A Challenge for Container Ports”, and, as usual, most of the speakers seemed to be paraphrasing one another.

“Worldwide goods flows and vessel sizes are continuously growing, which has a direct effect on ports. They have to become more efficient and increase capacities”, was the opening remark in the Journal’s story, and in case readers didn’t understand those words the second sentence said exactly the same thing. “Continuing growth in global container transport, and the deployment of ever larger vessels on the main routes, has increased pressure on ports”. Some examples:

– “Peder Sondergaard, the chief operating officer (COO) of APM Terminals International … believes that goods flows in the container sector will continue to grow by an average of 10% annually over the next few years. On the one hand he welcomed this trend, as growing world trade creates more employment opportunities, lower prices and as a result increases consumer spending … [Economic studies do not support these three points] … but on the other hand he also sees problems arising, particularly in the ports.” Mr. Sondergaard called for government investment in fundamental port infrastructure, innovation, and new ideas in technology. [When he said, ‘government’, he meant us taxpayers/consumers, of course.]
– Patrick Verhoeven, secretary general of the European Seaports Organization (Espo), stated that, “The EU has to create an attractive environment for investors in the port sector. When laws are drafted in future, all parties involved should be able to voice their demands, including port authorities and port companies”. [When Mr. Verhoeven said ‘all parties’, however, you know darn well he wasn’t including us taxpayers/consumers.] He made that clear when he stated that port authorities are “seeking greater independence from central or local government [the taxpayers/consumers] … which would enable them to rapidly clear bottlenecks without being subject to drawn-out authority involvement …”
– Jean-Francois Mahe, senior VP of container logistics with CMA CGM, commented upon ports’ problems from their customers’ point of view – the shipping lines … [All the while you thought the taxpayer/consumer was the customer, right?] Growth will only be hampered, he said, by escalating fuel costs, an inadequate inland transport organization, and last but not least, inadequate terminal capacities and productivity rates in some ports.

Mahe, however, repeated the demand expressed by Jacques Saade, president of the CMA CGM group, who has broken ranks by stating that “shipping lines should become more active in this sector and could indeed join forces in an investment fund, for example, in order to invest jointly in ports worldwide”. M. Saade is the first maritime official to talk sense, and the natural consequence of this logical thinking is that shipping lines will turn to smaller ships in order to offload at smaller ports closer to end users. Then we’ll see “more employment opportunities, lower prices and … increased consumer spending”, and all participants “will emoige triumphant” … as Johnny Atti used to say.